


disarmed

by katietonks



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Background Character Death, Canon Compliant, F/M, Healing, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 03:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19737028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katietonks/pseuds/katietonks
Summary: In 1937, Bucky returns home to find Steve lying in a bathtub.In 2025, Bucky returns home to an empty apartment.In 2037, Bucky returns home to find Sam in the kitchen.A collection of three stories in which Bucky returns home from work, removes his jacket, and allows himself to be vulnerable with the people he loves.





	1. i. 1937

_disarmed._

_“To love is to be vulnerable.” – C.S. Lewis_

_i._

Bucky sighed as soon as the lock on the door to his apartment turned with a familiar click. His shoulders ached after a long day of work, beginning at the break of dawn with hauling sacks of flour and shipment crates of fresh produce at the market all throughout the morning. Throughout the afternoon, he moved upstairs to the tailor shop where he spent the remaining daylight hunched over a sewing machine beside his mother and the rest of the ladies who insisted on chatting his ear off as they mended clothes.

Utterly exhausted, all he wanted to see was – Steve, who he found immediately as the door swung open, where he laid in the bathtub which sat so unusually in their kitchen. The bathtub was dry, and he was only wearing his underwear with a washcloth draped over his eyes. Bucky wasn’t confused or even concerned, but more content to see Steve sprawled out, knobby knees sticking out comically over the sides of the tub, pressing his skin against the cool porcelain. All these details meant that Steve was not sick, as usual, but: “Hot?” Bucky asked to clarify, leaving his shoes by the door. The beads of sweat that had accumulated in his collarbones rolled down his chest as he undid the top two buttons of his white shirt.

"Mm,” Steve all-but grunted in response, not bothering to move in the slightest. Only an eye peaked out from the damp cloth at the sound of Bucky’s suspenders hitting the floor.

With a light chuckle, Bucky simply drew the curtains across the window above their ever-leaking faucet and left his shirt on the cracked counter.

He stepped out of his pants before climbing into the tub behind Steve, who leaned forward to accommodate and fell backward against Bucky’s chest with an appreciative sigh. Peeling the washcloth from his face, Steve offered it to Bucky who graciously accepted, wrapping the cool cloth around the back of his neck.

“What did you do today?” Bucky asked in a gentle voice – as gentle as the way Steve rested his head against his bare chest, as gentle as the strip of the day’s final golden sunlight that snuck in between the crack of the curtains and bathed the young couple where they laid together.

“Sat outside for a bit. Made sketches for the portfolio.” He rolled his head to the side, as if in a particular way so that he could hear Bucky’s heartbeat, strong and slow.

Bringing up his hand, Bucky slipped his fingers into Steve’s hair, singling out a few strands in order to appreciate how the sun affected the blonde color. In the summer, the very end of Steve’s hair practically became translucent. Distracted, he realized he’d forgotten to reply, asking lazily, “Yeah? 

“Yeah,” Steve sighed again, leaning into Bucky’s hand, apparently thinking back to the original question. “Thought about you.”

Bucky tried to hide his smile by pressing his lips to Steve’s hairline where the roots were more exaggeratedly dark. “You know, Rogers, I’m startin’ to think you got some sick obsession with me.”

Nudging out of his grasp, Steve flipped himself over, accidentally elbowing Bucky in the ribs in the process, and placed his chin in the center of his chest so that Bucky could clearly see his toothy grin. “Caught me.”

Bucky held his hand against Steve’s lower back, relishing in the feeling of his lungs expanding and contracting with relative ease and at a stable pace – something about health always serving as a symbol of hope for the two. “What did you draw?”

Steve paused to reflect on his work, pretending as if the answer was not obvious. “You’re always a good warm-up,” he admitted with a smirk. “Still trying to get a handle on those self-portraits before classes start again in the fall. Didn’t go so hot today.”

“Well, I imagine it ain’t easy replicating perfection.” 

Long-since accustomed and numb to the charm, Steve brushed the compliment off coolly but failed to hide the flush of red that warmed the high points of his seasonally-freckled cheeks. “Not sure what you’re trying to get out of this, Barnes.”

Playfully cocky, Bucky lowered his eyelids, focusing his gaze purposefully on Steve’s mouth. “Just this,” he whispered before ducking down for a brief kiss that felt so feather-light that it barely seemed to take place at all. Always impatient, Steve brought their lips together once more, sealed tighter than before, until Bucky’s self-affirming grin broke them apart, reveling in the feeling that his charisma had worked after all.

Steve rolled his eyes as he laid his head back down. “What did _you_ do today?”

“Thought about you,” Bucky said, immediately and unashamed. Steve scoffed. “Yeah, thought about you so much, wasn’t paying attention, and stuck the needle right into my thumb.”

_“Shit!” Bucky swore under his breath as soon as the tip of the needle pierced his skin._

_The curse was met with a chorus of gasps from the women who were more concerned with the garment than his injury. “Don’t even think of getting a drop of blood on that fabric, James Barnes!” his mother yelled from across the room._

_He cupped his other hand under his thumb, watching such drop of blood roll down his finger, and pulling it away from the pastel, Robin egg blue dress which he was hemming – one of the dresses for the bridal party that they had been working on for the entire week. The color was beautiful, just so happening to be the same shade as Steve’s eyes._

_Leaning back in his chair, Bucky looked over to his mother’s work station where she kept the drawings that Steve made of the whole family, including Bucky, his parents, sister, Sarah Rogers, and even one of Steve’s self-portraits._ For complaining that he’s no good at self-portraits _, Bucky thought to himself,_ he _sure_ was selling himself short. _He had perfectly captured the sparkling wonder in his eyes, the way that his bangs just so slightly fell across his forehead_ – which was when his hand slipped. 

“It’s fine now,” he said, as Steve brought his wounded thumb to his lips, but felt the corners of his own lips quirk up at that. “Well, alright, maybe it’s a little sore.”

Steve shook his head and laid back down, only raising it when Bucky’s chest rumbled with a huff of a laugh. “What?”

“Ma’s been working on this big monstrosity of a dress with all kinds of tulle and lace, and it’s got her thinking about all that wedding nonsense. She told me once how much easier it’d be with just two suits.” Steve gave a bashful smile which Bucky quickly ruined by adding, “I told her not to get her hopes up.”

“Be still my heart,” Steve deadpanned. “My, you are a _master_ of romance, Buck.”

“No, it’s not that I don’t want to, because I do! Believe me, you know I wouldn’t want anything more-”

“This is a terribly confusing proposal." 

“-in life. It’s only because we _can’t_. We just can’t.”

Steve sighed, as the weight of the somber truth hung heavy in the humid air in the form of silence instead of a rebuttal. “Times can change,” he whispered after a few moments. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, “that’s also what Ma says.”

Bucky rested his eyes, letting his head hang over the lip of the tub, as he drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help but picture Steve in a suit in that beautiful blue.


	2. ii. 2025

_ii._

Bucky sighed as soon as the lock on his apartment door turned with a more-recently familiar click. Flicking on the light switch with his shoulder, he dropped his bag to the floor so that he could untie and kick off his boots, leaving them on the mat by the door – a habit engrained in him in another life. A habit, like all the other memories, that flooded back to him after getting his brain “fixed” in Wakanda. (Shuri laughed when he apologized for keeping his shoes on inside of the palace, saying, “Times have changed, old man.”) Regardless, being raised by, practically, two strict-but-loving mothers had wired him to be a _respectful_ 101-year-old, depressed assassin.

He pulled the compass from his jacket pocket and propped it open on the kitchen table in the center of his SHIELD-issued, studio apartment before crossing the room to his closet. “We did it,” he announced, casually, to no one in particular as he hung the leather bomber on a sturdy-enough hanger. “Saved the day and whatnot. Survived the press conference ambush afterwards too.”

Perhaps a hint of a smile appeared on his lips as he said that and moved to the other corner of the room to approach his locked weapons cabinet. Punching in the six-digit code, he continued, all the while unstrapping the knives plastered against his chest, thigh, and wrist, “We work well together. Sam and me. Not gonna lie, I was a little surprised, but I don’t know. I guess we finally – clicked.”

He counted the guns and the knives one last time – an extra precaution, an extra habit – before locking the cabinet. With the weapons stashed safely away, he began unbuckling the heavy bulletproof vest. “Sam is – impressive, to say the least. More than that, amazing. He’s smart, quick on his feet, and hell, he can even do the interview thing.” He hung the vest up beside the jacket and hesitated, turning back to look over his shoulder toward the table. “I guess I’m still learning that I’m one of the good guys now. _Again_.” He walked over to his bed, sitting down on the end of it. “Not a killer anymore, not a mission, not somebody’s puppet. A hero.”

 _That was a new one_.

He rolled his eyes, immediately wincing at the black and blue that was forming on his cheek. Being a “hero” apparently meant taking a few more punches than he would have liked, but no one died. That, too, was a new one. “No blood to wash off my hands tonight. I could definitely get used to that.”

He stripped off his black, long-sleeve shirt that he wore beneath the uniform, and it now lay along with the military-esque pants and socks on his “bedroom” floor. The last thing to address before he slept was his hair which he reveled in freeing from its confines, carding his fingers through to separate the pieces of the braid and allowing the dark waves to fall down his back.

Bucky sighed. 

Standing once more, he retrieved the compass, feeling the cool hardwood against the soles of his feet, and returned to his bed climbing on top of the sheets, as he was still growing accustomed to the feeling of comforting warmth. He gingerly placed the small object on one of his pillows and laid his head against the other, rolling onto his side to look at it. “You really picked a great one,” he said, voice dropping to an honest whisper. “There’s no one else on Earth that would be a better fit for the role. Except for the obvious.” He allowed himself to smile; he almost told a joke. “He’s a reminder that there’s still some goodness left in this world. You didn’t take it all with you.”

He gently brought a finger up to slowly trace around the picture behind the worn, tarnished glass. Inside was a self-portrait – sketched in the cheap lead of a sickly artist’s last pencil – of young, skinny, shaggy-haired and summer-blonde Steve Rogers, forcing himself to smile into a mirror for hours on end to gauge his work. The drawing was dated _3.10.1942._ – a birthday present shipped overseas for a reluctant, love-struck soldier in the midst of multiple endless wars.

The _I miss you_ went unspoked as Bucky closed the compass for the night and rested his eyes.

The _I love you_ was engrained into each fraction of his soul, every action that he made, and eagerly said aloud with his new-found optimism for the future.


	3. iii. 2037

_iii._

Bucky sighed as soon as the lock on the door to his home turned with a familiar click.

From the couch, Sam looked up from his book to greet him with a smirk. “Rough day being Captain America?” 

Basically throwing his bag onto the floor with all his might and kicking off his shoes halfway across the room, Bucky proved his point with the melodramatic response. “Are there any easy days?”

Sam’s grin only grew larger. “The school visits aren’t so bad. ‘Get good grades. Don’t do drugs.’ All that jazz.”

“Way too many kids,” Bucky said, shaking his head as hung up his jacket. 

Sam’s booming laugh echoed off of the cozy wooden fixtures of the living, past the master bedroom, and into the bathroom where Bucky had laid a spare change of clothes across the oversized tub. As he changed, he looked on over the porcelain with a fuzzy sort of fondness, like remembering an inside joke but forgetting the punchline.

After going through the routine of weapons-storing, Bucky returned to the living room just as Sam came back from the kitchen, carrying two glasses of wine. Sam gave him a once-over before handing him the red and the white for himself. “You make my clothes look damn good, Barnes.”

Bucky hid his blush behind the glass, taking a long sip while sitting on the floor in front of the couch, needing a firmer grounding after the hectic day. “Dinner?” he asked as Sam climbed back into his seat behind him.

“About thirty minutes. That pain-in-the-ass pasta dish you love that forces me to peel and dice about five hundred cloves of garlic by hand one by one.”

Bucky simply rested his head against Sam’s knee as a sign of gratitude, only now realizing how the scent of garlic and olive oil had wafted throughout the entire house. Sam took the action as an invitation to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair as they sat in comfortable silence. Occasionally, he would twirl a strand around his finger, holding it in a loose curl, before letting it fall back down. It was the longest it had grown, finally reaching his shoulders, after cutting it short not long after one of his first missions with SHIELD and realized the problematic implications of remaining attached to a Hydra-issued hair style.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam asked, suddenly sounding quieter and more serious 

“My hair?”

“No, I mean _today_.”

“Today?” Still lost and facing away from Sam, Bucky stared into the unlit fireplace where ash laid at the bottom from being burned the night before. “It went fine.”

“The _date_ , James.” Bucky stilled with his glass only halfway to his mouth, but Sam stayed perfectly patient, continuing to comfortingly toy with Bucky’s hair. “Stark’s funeral. When Steve – left. And came back.”

“Oh.” Again, he stared off vacantly, this time focusing on the corner of the room where their cabinet was filled with old pictures and trinkets. “I didn’t – I didn’t realize another had passed already.”

Sam paused, allowing to speak up again if he wished, and when he didn’t, he asked, “So, do you? Want to talk about it, I mean? We usually do.”

Of course, he was right: the topic had dominated their conversations when the wound was still fresh. One of them would bring it up every few minutes, mostly Bucky whispering under his breath in sheer, anguished disbelief, and Sam would implore him to discuss what he was feeling, habitual from his old work. That routine eventually expanded into every few hours, when Bucky would wake from uneasy sleep in tears, to every few days, every few weeks, and every few months, when Bucky’s breath would catch in his throat, his heart seemingly unable to beat, and his chest tightly seizing. Following close behind, Sam was always there to dry his eyes and tell him to breathe, to eat, and to forgive himself. Always, _always_ so gentle and kind and reassuring, as if he wasn’t feeling the exact same hideous emotions.

For Bucky, thinking about Steve was like pressing against a bruise. In a twisted sort of way, the pain and the pressure felt – good, something like relief could be found in indulging in that masochistic instinct. The pain, still, triumphed over all. For far too long, the skin remained raw to the touch, and he hissed any time he brushed against it. It kept him afraid, closed from the world in fear of exposing his true self again. Over time, the colors began to change as it healed. The sickly yellow deepened into the green of envy which lightened into the mottled and melancholy blue and purple that would fade with time. It would, forever, lie dormant beneath his skin, flaring every so often in the little moments that reminded him of Steve – an artist sketching in the corner of their favorite café, a cashier being extra polite to an older customer, a scrappy kid that would run up to him for a picture while bragging about standing up to a bully. Yes, the dull ache remained permanently lodged deep in his chest, but the pain now came and went in phases. 

“Yeah,” Bucky finally spoke up with a sigh, “yeah, we usually do, and we probably should.” Except, in this instance, the words that he once could have written down on pages upon pages of text seemingly vanished from his mind. After having the same conversation for years, was there anything left to discuss? His voice dropping to a whisper, he admitted, “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s fine.” Sam brought his other hand up to caress Bucky’s neck. “You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just-” Inhaling and exhaling a deep breath through his nose, Bucky placed his glass on the table and turned to rest his back against it so that he could face Sam. He took Sam’s hands and interlaced his fingers with his own. “I think it’s time to move on, and I’m ready.”

“That’s not necessary, James. No one is forcing you-”

“No, I want to. I _have_ to, and I have. I will. I am.”

Calmly, they sat together, hand in hand, allowing those words to process while they hung in the air. “It’s alright,” Bucky took the lead in reassurance this time. “So much has changed for us this year; _we’ve_ changed so much this year. It’s time.”

Sam looked down at him – his expression caught somewhere between empathetic and relieved. “There was a point in my life when I thought that I could never fall in love again. When I lost Riley, it felt like my life was over, like there was no point in going on if I had no one to live for. And then I met Steve who whisked me away into this world of stress and chaos and forced me fight Nazi’s and aliens and gave me the biggest responsibility of my life. But if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have met you.

“ _You_ , the reason I wake up in the morning and the last beautiful thing I see before I sleep. _You_ , the motivation I need to get me through the worst days and work myself exhaustively over a stove just to see you smile. _You_ , the brainwashed super-assassin who ripped the steering wheel from my car, tried to murder me the first couple times we met, and _still_ somehow had me smitten over those damn blue eyes.” Listening to all this, Bucky blinked exceptionally slow, as flirtatious as he did for free drinks in bars in another lifetime, but at this line, he couldn’t help but laugh. Sam lifted his hand from Bucky’s grasp to brush his thumb against the lines that appeared at the corner of his eyes when he smiled.

Bucky held his palm against his cheek, as Sam continued, “You’re the love of my life, and that fact used to terrify me, because what did that mean for Riley? Did that mean he didn’t matter anymore? Was I betraying him by being with you, or was I just with you because you remind me of him? After a while, though, I realized that it’s all okay. It’s okay to be scared of change and to miss the ones you used to love, to still _love_ the ones you used to love, and maybe people have more than one soulmate. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe it’s healthy to remember the ones we’ve lost and recognize their traits in the ones we have now. And maybe we don’t ever have to move on.

“But, I’d be lying if I said that you being ready for that didn’t fill my heart with joy, because you know better than I do that Steve Rogers is a bastard to compete with – not that it’s a competition.”

Bucky nodded with a grin as his heart panged, the bruise quietly resurfacing in protest while his brain shooed it away.

Bringing their hands back together in his lap, Sam sighed, preparing the conversation for one last somber turn. “If I could answer that question for you, I would. I think about it every single day, and I don’t think either of us will ever truly understand why he left. But if it’s any consolation, you should know that there is _nowhere_ else that I would rather be right now than being here with you. I love you, James Barnes.”

Feeling his heartbeat pound in his ears, Bucky rose from his knees and pulled Sam down from his collar for a kiss, wrinkling the pale blue linen. “I love you too, Sam Wilson,” he said before brushing their lips together again. “And I don’t think I ever need to know the answer to that question.”

Sam threaded his fingers back into Bucky’s hair and finally pulled him up onto the couch. As they separated, Sam chuckled, making Bucky ask, “What?”

Sam shrugged. “Life’s not fucking fair, is it.”

Giving a bittersweet half-smile, Bucky nodded once more. “Steve or Riley?”

“No,” Sam said, shaking his head. “My fiancé was born sixty years before me, and _I’m_ the one going gray.”


	4. epilogue.

_epilogue._

The cemetery felt the most at peace with no one else around. Just far enough from the nation’s capital for there to be a semblance of silence, the ever-present noise of traffic could only be heard as a faint murmur in the distance. It was early, hours before the masses woke up for their day jobs, and the only ones awake were the late-shift workers and the restless. The moon hung in the dark sky, high above where the stars would be sparkling had they not been blocked from the city lights.

Bucky didn’t need light to find the grave. Having visited year after year, his feet practically drug him along in familiar routine. A thin layer of snow still clung to the ground; otherwise, he would have found comfort on the frozen grass.

He sighed, watching his breath float along as steam along with the breeze, and crossed his arms. 

Looking down at the headstone, the darkness obscured the letters engraved on the granite, but the name was, nevertheless, engraved on his heart. “Hi, Steve.” Despite years of tradition, his voice always sounded – _off_ , in this context. Breaking the calm quiet by speaking out loud always felt wrong even though he was the only one that could be bothered. 

He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of the self-conscious thoughts and tried again. “It has been a _wild_ year, Steve, and I probably should have written down a list of talking points, but I never did, so here it goes:

“So, first, I’m retired now. It was all my decision and actually something that I’ve been considering for a while now. I mean, you know that this was never the lifestyle that I imagined for myself. I never wanted to go to war, and I sure as hell never wanted to be a superhero, whatever that even means. And I really gave it my all, but this year, I’ve realized that maybe I should start doing something that makes me happy, rather than keep forcing myself to do something that other people say I should do.

“So, I started writing. Like how I wanted to when we were teenagers. Except, this time, a little less science-fiction and a little more _realistic_. Can you guess what I write about?” He smirked, resting his hand on the corner of the headstone. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all of it. I’ve mostly been typing out pages on an old typewriter of little stories that I remember here and there that I might want to go back and read one day. Who knows, maybe there’s other people out there that would want to read them too.

“As for Sam, I think he’s still got a little time left in him as the old Captain. Although, I _have_ been quite tempting in persuading him to join the pension lifestyle, so we’ll see. He’ll be more comfortable with leaving once they decide on a replacement. They’ve narrowed it down to two candidates, but in my opinion, there’s a pretty clear front-runner. She’s really amazing, Stevie; I wish you could have seen her. She might actually be better cut out for the job than any of us were, but you know all about those trials she’ll have to go through first.”

Pulling his jacket closer to him, Bucky allowed the thought to trail off, his voice being overtaken by the rustling of the trees. “We got married. Sam and me. After we kept pushing it back until we weren’t busy, we decided, _to hell with it_ , and did it right after a mission with one too many close-calls. We found a clearing in the woods and just – did it. Exchanged a few words. Turns out it’s not too hard to come up with things to promise each other when you go through your relationships by constantly making and repeating vows. Old habits, huh?”

He remembered a nine-word phrase that essentially encompassed an entire portion of his soul and fought back the tingling sensation in his eyes and pressure in his chest with a tight smile.

“I guess this is _my_ way of coming back to show off the ring.” Removing his left hand from his pocket, he stretched out his metal fingers, knowing to admire how the gold band complimented the metal of his arm even though he couldn’t see it in the dark.

“I’m not mad,” he clarified, realizing how he may have sounded petty in a different context. “Anymore. I miss having you in my life, more than anything, but I really am glad that you found someone who could love you the way you deserved to be loved. I just wish I had the chance to speak with her. To tell her all your little tips and tricks – the same way you did with Sam, giving him Ma’s old recipes, too. 

A few snowflakes had begun to fall, catching in his hair and dusting his sleeves. He looked over to the grave beside Steve’s. “I would have told her how you put _everyone_ else before yourself, no matter the circumstance. And how you refuse to let anyone know when you’re in pain. And when you’re scared, you fit yourself into small spaces, so if she finds you wrapped up in a ball between the bookshelves, to keep reminding you that everything will be okay. You, obviously, won’t ever listen, but it’s worth a shot. When you’re angry, you go completely silent, but don’t confuse that with when you’re concentrating. The difference is in the furrow between your eyebrows.”

“Anyway,” he continued after being unable to stop himself from reminiscing, “say ‘hi’ to Ma for me. And Sarah. And Becca. Tell them all how proud I am of them and not to worry about me, because maybe for the first time in my life, I can say that everything will be alright and actually believe it.”

Looking up at the snow that had begun to fall harder, he tried to recall anything else that needed to be said. “Tell Natalia that Barton misses her. He didn’t tell me to say that, but it’s obvious. I think he might understand our situation as well as any of us – finding the love of your life after you’ve already met your soulmate. It’s almost like everyone we’ve ever met. Peggy, her husband, and you. Sam, Riley, and me. Barton, Laura, and Natalia. Me and you. It’s just life, isn’t it. Sounds _so_ unfair on the surface, but in reality, it is completely and utterly – _fine_.

“We deserve to be happy. We deserve to be loved, and if that love comes with sacrifices in the form of letting go of the loved ones we lost, so be it. We deserve to love again and again and again, and it’s a beautiful thing. And we should never feel guilty about that.”

Listening to his own words ringing true in the air, Bucky looked up toward the sky again, more focused, as if trying to pinpoint an exact star behind the screen of light pollution. The snowflakes in his eyelashes became indistinguishable from the tears. “I love you. I will always love you, and I miss you. But I think this may be the last time in a while that you hear from me.” He removed the dog tags from under his shirt and pulled them over his head – an accidental mix-up whose explanation baffled historians yet appeared blatantly obvious to a select few. “I came to return these. They’ve been hanging a bit too heavy on my neck, so I wanted to give them back to you – to _life_ – out of thanks for bringing you to me and always bringing you back to me when I needed you the most.”

He cradled the tags with his hands against his chest until the metal became so hot against the cool air that it nearly scorched his skin. He laid them on top of the grave. “So, this must be it. For now. I’ll see you when my time is up, but until then, I am going to devote myself to being happy and loved and _in_ love, with my husband and myself and the future, instead of the past.”

It was a final vow to himself, and he intended to keep it. 

“Goodbye, Steve.”

Pushing a silver strand of hair behind his ear, he began the walk home alone.

Soon, Sam would be waking and reaching across the bed, expecting Bucky, but only to find empty space. He’d smile as soon as the door opened, beaming up at Bucky as if he were the sun itself. Bucky would undress and collapse into the warm sheets and Sam’s enveloping embrace. He’d fall asleep faster than he’d ever been able to in recent years.

Exposed, but not bare.

Despite having found his guide and his path to travel, the compass remained locked in the drawer of his bedside table.

Honoring, but never obsessing over the past.

Love and loss, two inevitable, irreplaceable, and interchangeable aspects of life that he had felt in abundance, but never again, jealousy and pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! Thank you so much for getting to the end of my very first published fanfiction. If you enjoyed reading it, please feel free to leave me a comment, letting me know your thoughts, or if you have any advice/recommendations, that would be just as appreciated! (Likewise, if you hated it, please let me know so I can find a better use of my time, lol.) I have been quite dedicated to my original works and the novel I have been writing for four years but decided to dabble in this for the summer to give my brain a little break; if you're in any way interested in my writing, please feel free to follow me on Instagram (@katie.tonks) where I'll be a bit more active in promoting that than I will be on here. 
> 
> Thanks again! :)


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